


Looking For Gold

by hafren



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-28
Updated: 2009-11-28
Packaged: 2017-10-03 22:07:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hafren/pseuds/hafren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"We came here looking for gold"...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Looking For Gold

**Author's Note:**

> This is set in Maeshowe, Orkney

Avon stepped out of the flier and immediately wished he'd brought warmer clothes. The landscape was flat, treeless and low-lying; the winter wind tore across it unhindered and made his jacket feel like paper. There was snow on the ground, glinting oddly blue in the keen, cold sunlight. The sky was cloudless and seemed to stretch for ever. Though it was mid-afternoon, the sun was already low; this far north, winter days were short.

He shivered, and Blake put an arm around him. Avon glanced up at him and objected, "For a romantic assignation, this place looks distinctly unpromising".

Blake smiled. "It does, doesn't it? But these people are the best; you've seen the brochures. Anyway, there's the guide, I think." He pointed to a man, leaning on a nearby wall, who regarded them with mild interest but made no move towards them.

Avon had never realised Blake had such a tenacious memory. Three years of constant work trying to stabilise his fledgling democracy should have put a casual promise out of his head. Maybe Blake hadn't thought of it as casual.

***

On the day the new republic was officially inaugurated, the acting president's mood had been so irrationally optimistic that Avon had great difficulty keeping his resolution to bite back all trace of cynicism. He finally stopped trying when Blake said, "I reckon we'll be able to hold elections in six months, even on the outer planets, and then I can step down".

"You will be lucky if you can hold them in three years, and even then I doubt any new regime will be stable."

Blake grinned at him. "It will. And on the day when even you have to admit it, I'll give you a present. Anything you want."

Even his scarred eye seemed to light when he smiled. Avon recalled it staring up at him from a blood-soaked floor and said quietly, "A clear conscience would be nice."

"If I could give myself that, I'd gladly do it for you." Blake's voice was sombre. "I have a lot more blood on my conscience than you do."

But I have yours. Avon did not say the words aloud; he was already feeling a pang of guilt for darkening Blake's mood.

But Blake was irrepressible today. "All right, you pedantic sod, anything you want that I can give you. Go on, choose."

"Oh.... whatever. How about an unforgettable sexual experience?"

Blake looked mock-hurt. "You mean I don't give you one of those every night?" And Avon had been glad to laugh, to deflect a conversation more intense than he was comfortable with. And had thought no more of it.

But the irritating thing about Blake's irrational optimism had always been how often, against all probability, it was justified by events. The elections took longer than six months to set up, but they happened. And if the new order was not perfection, people did seem to recall that the old had been worse, and not to want it back. On the day Blake said casually, "Do you think things are stable enough for me to take some time off?", Avon was glad to admit that the answer was yes.

"I can't give you your present yet," Blake said apologetically. "I've asked this new travel company to set something up, but apparently it has to be in the middle of winter. And clear weather. They'll give us a call when the day's right." He tossed a brochure across. It claimed to deliver personalised experiences of a lifetime, based on expert analysis of psychological profiles - Avon suddenly recalled the lengthy online quiz Blake had got him to fill in, just for fun, he'd said. There were a lot of these new entrepreneurs about, now that the dead hand of the regime had been removed, but this lot - he checked the name again - Carnell Enterprises were more enterprising, and more arrogant, than most, judging by their slogan: "We know your heart's desire: find out what it is."

"Presumably I shall enjoy it, then," he said dryly, "but will you?"

"I hope so," Blake said. "I don't know any more about it than you do, but I did the quiz too, and if it works, there's something I'm hoping to be able to ask from you in return." He would say no more until, months later, he told Avon the call had come through for them to go to the venue.

***

Blake, his arm still around Avon, strode over to the man by the wall, the two presidential security men following a discreet distance behind. He checked the note in his pocket. "Are you Magnus Rendall?"

"Aye. You'll be the customers." No excitement that one of them was the president who'd liberated a galaxy; no acknowledgement, even, that he knew him from Adam. Avon was torn between admiring the man's cool and wanting to kick him. "You'd better be following me, then." The guide picked up a rucksack and a bundle of what looked like skins.

"Where are we going?" Blake asked, his hair a wind-blown chaos. Avon had already noted a complete lack of buildings nearby.

Rendall gestured to his left, at the only hill in the low-lying landscape. At least, it looked like one, until they walked around the side of it. Then they saw a long, turf-banked path leading to an opening in the hillside.

"Tell me it isn't a cave," Avon said.

Blake shook his head. "It's man-made, isn't it?" he asked Rendall. "And very old?" His eyes were alight; he'd always had a secret passion, Avon remembered, for history, a banned and clandestine study under the Federation. Avon himself had little time for it. He liked modern conveniences, and sincerely hoped this mound held more of them than was apparent.

Rendall nodded and entered the path. Blake gave the security men permission to go back and wait in the flier. Then he and Avon followed the guide.

Though they could easily see over the turf banks, it felt oddly claustrophobic. The entrance to the mound was pitch-black. From nowhere, Avon recalled Vila's voice, "One day we'll go into one of these holes in the ground and never come out." Just as he disappeared through the doorway, Rendall snapped on a torch and they saw the faint light flickering ahead as he called back, "You'll want to be minding your heads."

Indeed they were bent double. They were in a stone passage now, narrow, far longer than might have been expected and it stayed back-breakingly low all the way. "Whatever is at the end of this," Avon warned, "had better be downright stunning." Ahead of him, he heard Rendall laugh. Though they were out of the wind, there was still a chill. The stones smelled of damp and cold, and of having been here, in just this place, for ever.

At length they saw a soft glow. Rendall had set a lamp on the floor and was standing upright. They straightened gratefully, and found themselves standing in a stone-floored chamber, with walls that seemed to be of wood and close-packed earth. At the back of the chamber, opposite the passage, Rendall dumped his package and began to arrange sheepskins and blankets into a pile against the wall.

Avon, shivering with cold and prey to horrible suspicions about where and how they were to spend the night, was temporarily deprived of speech. But Blake was looking curiously at what he could see of the wall in the lamplight. There were strange, angular marks carved into it. "Is this a language?" he asked Rendall.

"Aye. Runes." Rendall moved the torch beam along one set of the marks and translated, "Many a proud lady, stooping low, has entered here."

"Why?" Blake was almost whispering.

"Ah, well," Rendall said, "that would depend on when she came. This place was a howe, where the dead were brought. Just the important ones, no doubt, the lords and ladies. But then later, when the custom changed, it was a shelter for soldiers and wanderers." He shone the torch higher. "Vikings, some of them. 'I carved these runes with the axe that belonged to Gauk'". He moved the torch on. "'Benedikt carved this cross' - a crusader, he would have been."

"How do you know all this?" Avon's sceptical curiosity outweighed even his discomfort. "There has been no ancient history studied for generations; any documents were supposed to have been destroyed. How can you even read those things?"

Rendall regarded him with amusement. "It would be a poor history that had to live in documents. History is the tale of the land and the folk; it's written on the land and in folk's memories. I know what the runes mean because my father knew, and his before him. When we had to live in the damned domes" - his face darkened - "and not on our own land, we passed the knowledge of it on, knowing that when the domes were gone, this would still be here. I had known this place all my life, when I first set eyes on it three years back." He turned to Blake and said quietly, "I thank you for that."

Blake glowed slightly - Avon could see that even in the dim light - and looked again at the rune about the proud lady. Rendall followed his eyes.

"She was maybe no corpse," he said consolingly, "this was a place of life as well as death. The soldiers had their memories; look here." He lit another series of runes. "'Ingibjorg, the pretty widow'. And maybe more than memories. The guides mostly don't translate this one." It was very short, just a few marks. "Thorni fucked; Helgi carved."

Blake snorted in amusement, while Avon wondered if it meant they'd brought a couple of girls in or seen to each other. If so, and if the words "at the same time" were implied, Helgi must have had a very steady hand.... Then his mind came back to the present, as Rendall picked up the lamp.

"You'll find a sort of poncho thing on top of that pile," he said, "it'll be the best way to keep warm. Keep an eye on this now and again." He laid a watch, whose dial glowed softly in the dark, on the floor where Blake could see it. "The sunset starts in about an hour. When it does, you'll want to be doing something interesting" - his mouth twitched slightly - "and you must both remember to be facing the passageway. It's a fine clear day; you should be lucky. Oh. One more rune." He flipped the torch up and read, "We came here looking for gold". Then he turned and stooped into the passage, the light of the lamp and torch diminishing with him.

It was all Avon could do not to call out to him at least to leave the lamp. But he had told himself some years back that he had forfeited the right ever to mistrust Blake again in anything. Or hurt him more than he could help, and Blake was sorting out the pile of skins with an enthusiasm that communicated itself even though it was too dark to see his face. "Come on. Under this."

It was indeed a poncho-type garment, but big enough for them both to get their heads through, while the rest of them stayed under cover. It was made of soft, incredibly dense wool; though it did not feel heavy it was surprisingly warm. Avon sighed with relief and sank down on the pile of fleeces propped against the wall. He could see almost nothing in the dark; Blake, sitting next to him, was no more than a shadow. The only faint light came from the passage in front of them, and even that was more like a different quality of blackness.

Avon was thinking of the runes. How the knowledge had passed from generation to generation, for all the Federation could do; how it had outlasted them. He was beginning to realise, with some awe, what "old" meant.

He felt breath tickling his neck, a hand checking his sleeve. "You're damp from crawling in that passage. So am I." Hands Avon could not see, working by touch alone, started to undress him with surprising deftness; he hadn't realised how well they knew his body. His own hands went to the warm, solid presence next to him and began undoing buttons and zips, sliding under layers of cloth to find skin that leapt at his touch and made his fingertips tingle.

Deprived of sight, he was keenly conscious of the smell and feel of Blake. The sea salt that the wind had left in his tangled curls. The cinnamon-scented soap he used. Avon had always liked it, but now he felt an urge to be surrounded by it. He dived completely under the poncho and breathed it in deeply, in a warm darkness where the only sound was Blake's heartbeat and his own.

There was an amused rumble, and Blake's hands lifted him, guided his head back through the poncho. "Won't do. We both have to keep looking at the passage, remember?" He eased Avon on to his lap and held him there so that they both faced the faint oblong of grey. Avon might have objected that there wasn't much to look at, but the fingers expertly erecting his left nipple were slightly distracting. He leaned back against Blake and mused inconsequentially, "I wonder if they found the gold, whoever they were."

"Could have. I think these burial places used to have treasure put in them, along with the bodies. It'll be long gone now. You can find treasure in strange places." He appeared to be going on a hunt of his own; his hands were straying lower, stroking Avon into restless excitement but holding him firmly still when he tried to turn round.

The place no longer seemed to be giving off the intimidating chill Avon had felt when he entered it. He sensed all around him in the dark the ancient graffiti he could no longer see: centuries of men on the move, leaving their mark while they could, so that those who came after should know they had once been here. He could feel them near him: the crusaders, the Vikings, the treasure hunters, the lovers, and he sensed only kinship from them. Even from the earliest users, the proud men and ladies who had entered a hole in the ground never to come out, he felt the thought, like a breath on the air: take your pleasure while you can.

One of Blake's hands left him for a moment, then returned. A finger slipped inside him and he gasped; the cream it was coated with was cold. "Where did that come from?"

"Had it in my pocket. You don't get to be president of the galaxy without some foresight."

Avon bit back the observation that the foresight hadn't extended to warming it, and said instead, "Put some on my hand, then." Blake found his hand in the dark and he felt cold oozing on to it. He tried again to turn towards Blake, and was prevented. "No, reach back. Give me your wrist."

And his hand was guided to where it could stroke cream into the hot hardness pulsing behind him. Blake's fingers were still probing and playing inside him; his ear was being kissed, nibbled and breathed in, and Blake's other hand was now wandering gently over his thigh. At least he thought all that was happening. His body, unseen in the dark, seemed to have turned into one single, undifferentiated erogenous zone and the slightest touch on the most innocent area of skin was enough to make him whimper with frustration. When Blake lifted and angled him slightly, he was too relieved to worry about pain; at the first touch of Blake's cock against him, he felt himself relax and open to it, welcoming the burning as it stretched him.

He was supported in Blake's arms. The strong, regular thrusts felt like being rocked. One hand held him securely while the other, still silky with the cream, teased his aching cock. Either he and Blake were making more noise than usual, or the chamber was amplifying it; all around him he could hear the echoes of love, so loud he could hardly believe it was just them. Maybe it wasn't, he thought disjointedly, maybe Thorni and Helgi and everyone else who had ever made love in here was joining in.

The rocking paused. He was about to protest volubly when he realised what had distracted Blake. There were trickles of sunlight leaking into the passageway, joining into streams, and suddenly he was almost blinded as a wave of pale golden light rushed in, like the tide up a beach, all the way along the passage and flooded the chamber.

They were caught in light, engulfed in it. Turning his head, he saw Blake's face, transfixed with wonder, and felt the thrusts begin again, harder and faster; he was screaming and Blake was shouting and he was rocketing toward climax and it felt like being taken by Blake and the setting sun at once as the tide entered him. On the wall the runes stood out sharply in the brightness: the fair widow, the crusader and the Vikings sharing the light with them.

As he collapsed against Blake, Avon heard him whisper, "We came here looking for gold".

Shattered as he was, Avon looked up as soon as he could, terrified the light would be gone before he had his fill of it. It was beginning to ebb; already there were shadows lapping at the lit walls. One, tall and swaying, made him think of Cally. Why should that be, he wondered, and why didn't he feel guilty, as he usually did when she crossed his mind. He turned to Blake and saw him staring intently at another shadow, like a huge pair of arms outspread, protecting.... it was surely Gan. Who had been entombed in earth, stone and darkness through Blake's fault, as Cally had been through his.

"They forgive us," he said softly, knowing that Blake understood him.

"Yes," Blake said, his voice shaky. "I see how it works now. This place is aligned, the passage is aligned, to sunset at the winter solstice. The shortest day. It was a promise, that things would get no darker, the light would come flooding back. A promise to the dead."

"And it comforts them," Avon said wonderingly. "They forgive the living for still being in the light; they want it to go on?" He wasn't entirely sure he understood that. The golden wave was beginning to recede down the passage and he longed to keep it.

"Of course," Blake said, "they share it. As long as people feel warmth and light and each other, and remember that they did too. That's why they leave their names." They looked around the dark chamber, still recalling where each name was carved.

"We should probably go soon," Blake said, "while there's still light in the passage. But one thing first." He extracted a hand from the poncho and stroked Avon's cheek with one finger. "Do you remember I said I'd ask something in return?" He paused, drew Avon's face to him and kissed it gently. "I was going to ask you to forgive yourself."

Avon had known that before he asked. Had known too that his refusal to let go of guilt had been hurting Blake for years. But it had been the one thing he could see no way of doing for him. Now, in this chamber where the dead forgave the living, it seemed for the first time like something he could possibly do. He looked into Blake's hopeful gaze, couldn't speak, and nodded. Dark as it was in the chamber, the smile on Blake's face was still discernible, an echo of the sun.

They rose, dressed, and, stooping low, followed the ebb-tide of light back down the passage.


End file.
